Biden breaks silence to condemn US campus ‘chaos’

“Order must prevail,” Joe Biden said, as he broke his silence on the campus protests sweeping the US following a major police operation to clear an encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles.

With pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments held at universities across the US often meeting stern enforcement action from police, the president said that both the right to free speech and the rule of law “must be upheld”.

“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent…In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues,” Mr Biden said. “But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail.”

Mr Biden made his first remarks on the unrest after police arrested dozens of protesters while clearing the UCLA encampment at Dickson Plaza. Students there had called for the university to divest from Israel amid the country’s deadly invasion of Gaza, but the institution’s leaders had declared the activity to be illegal.

About 24 hours earlier, violence had flared at UCLA when pro-Israel activists attacked the protest camp.

And that came after police in New York arrested about 280 people while clearing a pro-Palestinian occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University. Protesters had barricaded themselves inside after university leaders ended negotiations with a vow not to meet their demands for divestment from Israel and instead began suspension proceedings against students inside an encampment on the nearby South Lawn.

Columbia said it had been “left with no choice” but to request the police intervention after its premises were “occupied, vandalised and blockaded”.

Speaking at the White House, Mr Biden said “there is the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos”.

“It’s against the law when violence occurs; destroying property is not a peaceful protest; it’s against the law,” Mr Biden said. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not a peaceful protest; it’s against the law.

“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so students can finish the semester and their college education.”

Mr Biden added that there “should be no place on any campus…for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students”.

Clashes between police and protesters had been reported on a number of other campuses, including Yale University, Stony Brook University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas at Dallas, in the run-up to Mr Biden’s remarks.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com